Book: The Way We're Working Isn't Working
Bigger, Better, Faster - that is not a sustainable way of being successful at work. Both employees as well as employers need to understand that and find a new way of organizing work - and of organizing yourself, to stay productive and creative, reach your goals, and live a happy life.
The Way We're Working Isn't Working - The four forgotten needs that energize great performance
Tony Schwartz with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy, Ph.D.
A great idea of this book is to summarize the "big ideas" at the end in a separate chapter. This way, after reading the book and probably being overwhelmed with all the good thoughts and ideas, you get a nice clean summary to transfer the ideas into practice.
Things I want to keep from this book are:
- Exchange of time (employee) vs money (employer) is unsatisfactory for both sides
- Humans need four sources of energy: physical (sustainability), emotional (security), mental (self-expression), and spiritual (significance). Reminds me of Maslow's pyramid.
- Humans a built for short sprints of work (90 min max) with pauses after them. Make a pause, go for a walk, drink a coffee, take a nap! You will be more productive afterwards.
- Strengths can be overused and turned against ourselves. You need to (somewhat) balance your strengths and your weaknesses.
- Changes to be adopted is hard; it requires rituals to integrate change into our lives. (think of any diet).
- Physical training. Every movement is better than no movement.
- Eat less. Eat more frequently, smaller portions (5 times a day). Eat healthy.
- Don't commute (by car, they mean, for a long time). Work from home. Or, at least travel off-peak.
- Be aware of how you feel. The more you are, the more you are able to influence.
- Be aware of your triggers
- The impact of "bad" is worse than the impact of "good".
- As a leader, show appreciation for the real achievements of your employees.
- We are not able to multitask.
- Use your whole brain. Train your creative thinking.
- Focus your attention. Turn off distractions, including direct messages and email.
- Define your own purpose. What do you want to achieve, and why. When is your time well spent?
- An organization needs values - real ones it can be held accountable to, not fake ones that are just marketing and not really lived by management and employees.
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